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You're hunched over your trusty Commodore late at night. The lights are low, your eyes are glazed, when suddenly, as if from nowhere. a blood-chilling voice rings out: "Aha!! Another visitor!! Stay a while... Stay forever!"

You grip the joystick fiercely. On the screen, a man leaps from an elevator shaft and runs down a lonely corridor, his footsteps ringing out through the empty building. Ahead of him lies an incredible test of endurance, intelligence and agility in a battle for the survival of the human race...

Yes, you're playing Impossible Mission. You've been playing it non-stop for the last eight hours. You're tired, you're tense, but, oh boy - are you hooked! This game has it all. Brilliant animation, superb speech synthesis, excellent graphics, and one of the most difficult, thrilling scenarios ever to flash across your TV screen.

Here are your orders: Elvin Mindbender, computer genius, has built a vast underground stronghold, comprising 32 chambers, all patrolled by intelligent robots. From this stronghold, he has succeeded in breaching the security of military computer installations and is about to trigger off World War III single-handed.

As Agent 4125, you start your mission in a lift, suspended above an empty shaft. A hideous voice sneers out a welcome, and then you tug on the joystick to start the lift on its descent. As soon as it reaches a floor, it stops and you leave the lift to run towards the first chamber...

At this point, if you've never played the game before, you'll probably be gasping at the quality of the graphics and animation. This guy really runs - he bounds down the corridor with all the spring and confidence of a real athlete. Even the sound of his footsteps is astonishingly realistic. There's no doubt about it, the visual effects on this game are absolutely unbeatable. If games improve much more on this then no-one will watch TV any more, they'll just load up a program instead.

But there's more to come. Once he reaches the first chamber, your hero finds himself confronted by a collection of platforms, patrolled by excellently designed robots, which he crosses by - wait for it - executing the most perfect somersaults you'll ever see outside a gymnasium!

Each room in the complex is joined to the others by a network of short passages and lift shafts. The layout is different each time you play. The rooms serve different purposes for their owner - some have beds in, others have desks, or banks of computer equipment and consoles. Some platforms are joined by lifts and most are guarded with frightening efficiency by robots.

Your task is to search every item of furniture and equipment for a series of puzzle pieces, which once collected and correctly assembled will enable you to break into Mindbender's network and save the world.

Different items of furniture require different amounts of time to search and this is indicated by a little bar displayed above your head that shortens as your search nears its end.

Often you'll come away unrewarded, but sometimes you'll pick up a puzzle piece, or perhaps a special control code that will enable you to freeze the robots in a room or reset the lifts (essential if you've fallen from a platform and can't get back up again!). Just getting the pieces is difficult enough. Although all the robots look remarkably similar, they all behave differently.

Some have regular movement patterns, others irregular. Some fire lasers, others don't. Some even stand there looking threatening until you approach them, whereupon you realise that they've broken down! Others *pretend* to have broken down, but if you get too close...

In between rooms, you can use your network computer which displays a map of the underground network, the amount of time you have left, and if required can display and sort out the puzzle pieces you have collected, with a bit of help from yours truly of course.

You can also use the computer to halt the game between rooms and even to call for help. whereupon you will receive guidance on the construction of the puzzle and whether or not you need more pieces. There is, however, a time penalty for using the helpline and also for being killed by robots or falling through holes in the floor (accompanied by a horribly realistic cry of despair!).

Some screens feature a vast computer console laid out rather like a chess board. Operating the console will reward you with a series of musical tones associated with different flashing squares. A hand then appears on the screen, which you must use to point to the different squares in order of ascending notes. Do this correctly and you are rewarded with a bonus control code.

Every room requires different tactics. Some rooms have no furniture at all, others are patrolled by a giant beach ball that kills on contact, others involve careful use of lifting platforms to reach the most promising areas. You have an infinite number of lives, but the more you get killed the less time you have to complete the game.

The speech is superb. Sometimes, on entering a room, the computer will greet you with the icy words "Destroy him, my robots". Other nice touches include a hi-score table that saves itself automatically on the disk version and the way the game is arranged completely differently each time you play.

Impossible Mission has the graphics, the animation, and the speech that you've always dreamed of. This truly brilliant piece of programming will keep you running and somersaulting through the night, every night, for many nights to come.

Although the principle of this game is beautifully simple, the challenge is enormous. The limited time available, combined with the fact that the game is different each time, makes gameplay complex and compelling.

First you need a good 'maze-sense' to cover the 32 different rooms using the most efficient route. You also need to develop a good knowledge of robot psychology, and make efficient use of your 'snoozes' (which temporarily freeze the robots).

Second, you need razor-sharp reflexes and careful 'jump judgement'. You may have an infinite number of lives, but you lose a lot of time if you get killed. Finally, if you succeed in collecting all the puzzle pieces, you need a fast, analytical approach to arrange them in the correct order before the time runs out.

But the real joy of this game is that, even if you don't get very far, playing it is still tremendously exciting and highly addictive. So get to it, gamesters - prove it's not 'impossible'!

Am I imagining things or is the C64 games market being over-run by the Americans? Impossible Mission from Epyx, deservedly well-known for their Summer Games program, is yet another high-quality import.

Sporting some superb graphics, this multi-screen game is a real winner. Not only are there a large number of actual game graphics, there is also a separate section which, using Macintosh style icons, allows you to manipulate parts of the puzzle.

A really good game which deserves a place in any self respecting software collection.

This has to be the ultimate platform game; forget Jet Set Willy and Manic Miner, they're nothing compared to this somersaulting, walking, talking, all-action game.

The animation is fantastic and the search for objects and the solving of puzzles make the game tough as well. You've even got the marvellous speech without any hardware add-ons, and following the trend of Ghostbusters, your computer gets the chance to laugh at you.

Apart from the incredible speech, animation and sound effects, this game has a real challenge to offer. It may appear, at first, that only those nineteen brains and a degree in metaphysics would be able to understand the finer points of the game. But in time the clouds will pass, leaving hours of fun in front of you.

The scream the game emits when you plunge to your death from a platform is so terrifying, the program should be X-rated. The speech uses the same remarkable programming as that in Ghostbusters, except that here the evil professor has a very English accent. It's astounding - as is the quality of the animation. The game itself is extremely convincing thanks to the attention to detail. Trapped in the professor's labyrinth of rooms, lifts and security codes you really do begin to feel like a secret agent.